Recently we asked several TAA members the question, “What changes are you hoping to see within the publishing industry this year?” Five key changes were identified: improvements in self-publishing, technology-driven innovations, better peer-review processes, increases in open access publishing, and a new era of transparency in publisher-author communication.
Pay to play: Are submission fees common for publication in journals?
There seem to be many recent email messages, advertisements, and calls for journal submissions that have touted competitive or lower than average submission fees. From a traditional perspective of submitting work to academic journals, you may 1) never paid for submission of articles, and 2) been wary of those journals who required payment for submission, thinking them to be less credible “pay to play” sources of publication.
With evidence of a more common practice of submission fee requirements, we solicited the opinions of TAA members Jörg Waltje, executive director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at Texas Woman’s University, and Patricia Goodson, presidential professor for Teaching Excellence and director of POWER Services for Texas A&M University, who provided different perspectives.
Open educational resources or traditional textbooks?
3 experts weigh in
An August 15, 2017 article in the Lansing State Journal, “LCC takes aim at pricey textbooks, offers free course materials”, shared a decision by Lansing Community College to offer students freely available open educational resources (OER) rather than traditional textbooks during the fall 2017 semester. Sixty-four professors in 24 courses will be taking part in the initiative.
The decision to use OER materials, said Regina Gong, a librarian and open educational resources project manager at LCC, was based on the College’s desire to reduce the “cost for incoming students who have to take introductory courses before moving on to higher end classes.”
In a recent discussion about the article in TAA’s LinkedIn group, three experts weighed in on LCC’s OER initiative, answering the question: “How many of you are working at schools considering or adopting this model? Thoughts?”
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: October 27, 2017
This week, October 23-29, 2017, marked the tenth annual Open Access Week. The articles collected this week include information on open education, Open Access textbook publishing, starting an Open Access journal, requirements for a sustainable knowledge commons, the editor’s role in a changing publishing industry, and equity and inclusion in scholarly publishing. As this month comes to a close, we are also preparing for Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) starting next week. Be sure to check out the last link with information about AcWriMo events co-hosted by TAA next month. According to Amit Kalantri, “The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.” This week, start something. Write that first line.
Beware of spam email from predatory journal publishers
TAA member Laura Frost recently received an email from a journal soliciting a paper based on her 2014 TAA Conference…
New Open Access Resource Center launched by CCC in partnership with the ALPSP
Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization creating global licensing and content solutions that make copyright work for everyone,…